Breastfeeding Advocacy: Nursing in Public

I will just go ahead and put it out there.  As a breastfeeding advocate my hope is that women will have better access to accurate information about breastfeeding, and that breastfeeding will become normalized and accepted throughout our society.  That's it.  I have no interest in convincing others to breastfeed, in my mind that's not what breastfeeding advocacy is about.  

Last week was World Breastfeeding Week, so I have come across and been involved in many conversations about breastfeeding.  Specifically the question of whether or not breastfeeding in public is appropriate and acceptable.  Opinions range from varying degrees of "yes" to "no, absolutely not".  I was surprised to read a comment on Facebook by someone who didn't think that breastfeeding should ever be done in public.  They thought other people's children should not be exposed to it because then their parent would have to explain to them what they were seeing.  Certainly there are those things that we do not want to expose our children to and have to explain to them early on - I just never considered that breastfeeding would be one of those things.

My mom breastfed us for short periods of time before returning to work.  I have no memory of my younger siblings nursing, though they did.  Witnessing women nursing in public has been infrequent, at best, throughout my life.  The emotions I experience when I see a nursing mother feeding her baby have always been somewhat mixed, but never anything except positive.  There is some level of discomfort in seeing something "out of the ordinary".  Honestly, except for cloth diapering and breastfeeding events I've attended, I might see a woman nursing in public once a month at best.  

Sadly, before I became a mother, I can honestly say that I had seen more horror stories on the news about breastfeeding mothers being kicked out of stores, kicked off planes and otherwise humiliated publicly than I had actually seen women nursing.  I have always found that appalling.  Even before I had my own child I felt that the appropriate time and place for breastfeeding was anytime, anywhere.  

I am and have always been a very modest person.  I was terrified to nurse in public when Addisyn was first born.  I didn't even want to nurse her in the car.  I wanted to be in our house, period.  And while that is partially due to my modesty, and my lack of confidence in my breastfeeding early on, I'm pretty sure that a bigger chunk of the problem was that I was afraid of ending up on the news.  It took me 13 months to become comfortable enough to even attempt nursing in public without a cover.

We live in a society that willingly accepts women's partially exposed breasts are all over magazine covers, television advertisements, movie posters and store displays.  Most uncovered breastfeeding mothers still expose far less than the average copy of GQ or Maxim.  Facebook deleted user breastfeeding pictures and profiles, yet Playboy has their own Facebook page complete with risque photos.  Maybe it's just me, but I would much rather explain to my young child why a woman is breastfeeding her baby than why there are half naked women on magazine covers and Victoria's Secret ads.